heavy metal, international travel, and half-assed Chinese cuisine, served irregularly.

Friday, July 28, 2006

Patchjacket - At The Heart of Winter (part 7)

Another repost of stuff relating to my heavy metal jacket.

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11/20/2005Being a day of mostly preparations, because I didn't wake up until midnight.58: The Problem Kreator Strip. It should be pretty obvious why this is a problem. The solution (the aforementioned red marker) was pretty cheap, but in a rational world this patch should not have come looking like this.59: The Problem Kreator Strip, fixed. Shot on my bed (and oversharpened like hell) rather than the couch so that the color would show up properly. Why Mille approved a white version of this strip in the first place is utterly beyond my comprehension. It matches none of their CDs and would stick out like a sore thumb on anybody's jacket or bag, and Kreator's logo is always red ANYWAYS. Maybe he owns stock in some marker companies. Maybe it was approved while he was huffing crazy-stupid gas in the mid-'90s. No idea.60: Iron Cross patch, pinned. The odd shape of this patch, combined with the location, made it slightly challenging.61: Iron Cross patch, affixed. This was also an iron-on, like the Dresden patch in the same place on the other side panel, but unlike the Dresden crest the glue was solid rather than sticky and did not resist the needle so heavily. I did have to buy silver thread to do this one, and despite my color-blindness matched it pretty well (at least as far as I can determine, anyways).62: Tankard patch, pinned. Arranging the sleeve stacks was time-consuming and full of changes, but any process that comes out with Tankard on top on one side to match Slayer on the other has surely ended well.63: Tankard patch, affixed. It probably could have gone on a little straighter, but determining reference on the shoulder tops is difficult; ideally I'd have put a round patch here, but Life In Vain doesn't have a 3-inch version of their Red Sox logo out yet. (Are y'all listening??)

11/21/2005Sleeve day!64: Kreator strip, pinned. There is a lot of red on this sleeve. I was originally going to do the Bathory strip on this side, but that was nixed by the need to keep both stacks relatively the same depth.65: Kreator strip, affixed. It's a little off-center, but this was dictated largely by the sleeve seam; I didn't want either the work of sewing through it or the visual problem of crossing the line.66: Bathory strip, pinned. This one does touch the seam; I'm not sure whether the seam is further forward on this side or the Tankard patch is aligned further back.67: Bathory strip, affixed. I think it's the seam; the patch is aligned on the shoulder studs, which are aligned on the shoulder seam, and that's the same as on the other side.68: Motorhead patch, pinned. This is a really huge patch that because of foreshortening in this shot looks basically normal. It's not, and it would totally dominate anywhere else I put it.69: Motorhead patch, affixed. The hugeness is a little more visible here. This would make a great patch for the place I put my Running Wild patch on someone else's jacket, but I ofcourse already had the piratewolf there.70: Hypocrisy patch, affixed. I just forgot to get a 'pinned' shot of this. Unlike the Immortal patch, a lot of the detail from this album cover is preserved on this one. Ofcourse, the Metallica and Kreator patches have already demonstrated that art is more likely to transfer well than photography.

There are two more patches to be added, one on each sleeve, and then probably some detailing on the waistband in the front, and then the jacket will be 'done' (a proper jacket is never complete, of course, but after this I'll substantially be out of space). It's already pretty damn impressive; when it completes, it will have been more than 2 months in the making, and worth every single stitch and staple over that time.